Their Own Worst Enemies - A bad midterm outlook for the GOP

Why should Republicans bother to vote GOP next November 5? Inexplicably, President Bush and congressional Republicans are giving their party base myriad reasons to go fishing on Election Day.

Republicans and Democrats have proven to be pigs in a bipartisan pen on pork-barrel spending. While some Republicans still treat taxpayers' dollars with reverence, too many more stand gleefully at the trough, snout-by-snout, with their Democratic colleagues.

This Congress is set to hike federal spending by 15 percent over just two years, more than quadruple the inflation rate. Most of this does nothing to fight terrorism.

On May 13, Bush signed a $191 billion farm bill that boosts agriculture subsidies by 80 percent. Congress even included $100 million to provide rural consumers "high-speed, high-quality broadband service." The Heritage Foundation estimates that this 10-year bill will cost the average U.S. household $180 in new taxes annually.

Bush's education department budget grows from $35.75 billion in 2001 (when he arrived) to a projected $57 billion in 2005. That is a four-year, 59.5 percent increase in federal school outlays. Bush's Leave No Child Behind initiative promotes testing and higher standards, but does little to advance school choice.

Bush signed the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance-reform law. It treats the disease of legal bribery with a prescribed overdose. As if there were no First Amendment, it will restrict political activists from purchasing ads critical of political incumbents within 60 days of elections.

Bush dropped an anvil on free-marketeers this spring when he imposed 30 percent tariffs on imported steel and a 27 percent tax on Canadian softwood lumber. This has created throbbing headaches among world leaders who have grown weary of Bush's self-mocking free-trade rhetoric.

Bush has applauded a Senate bill by liberal Republican Pete Domenici of New Mexico and arch-liberal Democrat Paul Wellstone of Minnesota that would force company health plans to insure mental illness and physical ailments equally. Costs will soar as employers underwrite medical care for anxiety atop angina.

A popular conservative president should steer Congress starboard. A May 14 - 15 Fox News poll of 900 adults found Bush's job approval at 77 percent (+/- 3 percent). Alas, like his father (who achieved 90 percent favorability after the Persian Gulf War), G. W. Bush guards his political capital like an heirloom rather than invest it for even greater gains.

When Democrats smeared appellate-court nominee Charles Pickering as a racist, Bush, for instance, should have held a press conference with Pickering and his prominent black supporters from Mississippi. As Charles Evers, the brother of slain civil-rights activist Medgar Evers, said: Pickering "was standing up for blacks in Mississippi when no other white man would." Bush avoided such bold action. A thousand cuts later, Pickering's nomination fatally hemorrhaged in the Senate Judiciary Committee last March.

Bush could have enhanced the prospects for petroleum exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He could have invited local Eskimos to the Rose Garden and let them explain how oil development would lift them from poverty. Better yet, Bush could have taken the White House press corps to ANWR to unmask its potential oil acreage as a barren mosquito farm. Bush avoided the ANWR fray, thus clinching that proposal's Senate demise.

Beyond speaking softly in his bully pulpit, Bush never has touched his veto pen. Had he threatened to reject some of this absurd legislation, fence-sitting GOP congressmen would have yielded and defeated (or at least improved) these bills. Absent Bush's leadership, they climbed atop the gilded bandwagon rather than fall on their laissez-faire swords. Republicans should worry that their demoralized stalwarts will do what they did in the last midterm election: Stay home.

The proportion of self-described conservatives at the polls fell from 37 percent in 1994 to 31 percent in 1998, Voter News Service reports. Frustrated with a "Republican Revolution" turned free-spending self-parody, the party faithful sat on their hands just enough to cost Republicans five House seats.

If they don't reverse this parade of white flags, Washington Republicans similarly may shrink or lose their House majority and dash their plans to capture the Senate — not because they advanced their free-market principles but because they betrayed them and thus surrendered their claim to power.

Well, I see that Murdock has written a column to give all the anti-Bush people yet another platform to shout their abuse today. Gee, what a surprise.

I also see that no matter how many conservative programs initiated and actions he has made, it is never good enough. If we cannot get a majority in the Senate and hold the house, we are in real danger of seeing funding cut from defense and a bogging down of the war. This is unacceptable.

There are a whole lot of supposed conservatives living in a fool's paradise. The major goal politically is to regain the Senate, so that we can get those judges and also get some decent legislation, like further tax cuts and social security reform and vouchers. Staying home will not help get the Senate and will endanger President Bush's second term, giving us possibly someone like Hillary or Gore. This is also unacceptable.

People keep saying they want a Reagan. Reagan signed a farm bill. Reagan signed a larger budget than he wanted. Reagan signed an amnesty bill. I could list a hundred things Reagan did out of compromise and the desire to advance his main goals.

The main goal for President Bush is to win the war and to take back the Senate in order to get the judicial appointments. All of the rest of this stuff can be rescinded and re-done at a later date.

But, if we lose the war, we don't have a second chance.Nothing else will matter.

If we can't get the judicial appointments, we will have 20 years of liberal judges, and maybe never again will we have the opportunity to shape national policy.

Therefore, hold your nose and vote Republican, even if it is Arlen Specter or Olympia Snowe. They will give us the two things we most need and which cannot be reversed. The other things can be changed, but the war and the judiciary are permanent.

I can't imagine such political ignorance.

The Democrats have the senate. Tom Daschle would only Daschle Bushs approval if he tired for an agenda in the Senate. When Lott had the senate even Bill Clinton was not dumb enough to do what you suggest. If he had he would have been removed from office.

Mudboy Slim thinks about only in terms of what pleases him. The name of the game is to get enough support from the 2/3 of the population that does not and never will support your position.

If Bush were to fight Daschle guess what happens in the fall elections? Such a fight causes the middle to say the hell with both sides. When the middle see both the Democrats and Republicans as bickering fools, who wins? Even someone who is stuck in the Mudd sould know the Democrats always win that game. The first hundred times the Democrats won that way, there was doubt. But after the next hundred or so times, some of us figured it was always going to happen that way. And it always has. Mud Boy still has hopes. He is betting the instant replay turns out different from the actual play.

The only victories that the right enjoyes is when the public sees them as the party trying to get along and the Democrats as those wanting to make trouble. Even Tim Russert gets on Daschle when Repubicans play it the right way.

The Democrats always try to pick a fight. Usuall the fact that the right never ever wins such a fight does not deter them from doing it. For example when Reagan fought over the budget he said the Democrats refused to pass what Reagan wanted. The media said it was Reagans fault for failing to work with congress. When the Republican congress refused it pass a budget that Clinton wanted it was Congresses fault for failing to pass a budget that Clinton will sign.

When the Democrats attack the Reublicans and the Repubilcans fight back, the media helps the Democrats. When the Democrats atack and the Republicans don't fight back, the media first comes down on the side of the Democrats. Then they see the middle is rooting for the underdog. So they take on the Democrats. It seems that even very stupid people could figure out the game is stacked against them.

It is only when those nasty Democrats try to start a fight and the Republicans try to get along that the public says "OH those nasty Democrats... I will vote Republican." It is a very poor player to keep using tactics that never win. Perhaps that is a clue for the 3 percent that are the far right. But they are the far right. Constant failure never causes them to question what they are doing wrong.

The name of the game is not playing poker but in getting control of all the deals. The only time this nation has moved from the right to the left or vice versa is when one party controls 60 votes in the senate, a majority in the house and the presidency. When that is the situation the nation is moved one way or the other. The only game worth playing is trying to get to that position.

It happened only two times in the last century. FDR had such a situation in the 1930's. He took our nation a long way toward socialism. LBJ had the same situation from 1965 to 1967. He added the great society. All other presidents made nearly zero difference. Reagan and Bush Sr. rolled nothing back. Cllinton added nothing for the left. It is stalemate city. Nixon gave a little to the left hoping for approval. He never got it. Ike tried to take a little back.. nothing much changed.

If Bush fights on this ground before Novembers election he will make little difference in the long haul either. And he will have fallen into Daschles trap. Why does daschle keep attacking when it doesn't work. He is hopeful that sooner or later he can get a fight started. If we fight he wins and it will have mattered not who is president. To maintain the status quo the Republicans only need the house. Ask Bill Clinton?

What Bush has with his 76 percent approval rating is an outside chance to get the senate to the 60 working vote position, If he can hold the house, and keep the presidency as wellm then changes can be made. He has only a chance to do it. That is all he has. But the chance is well worth taking.

And the fools that think Bush Sr. squandered his 90 percent approal are wrong. Approval goes out the window when a president fails to address a problem. He does not need to solve it. He just has to look like he is solving it. The recession of 1991 did bush in becase he offered no plan to fix it. Had he pushed any plan to fix it he would have been unbeatable. At the time I argued that any plan would work. He could propose sacreficing virgins or burning Christians at the stake to fix the economy. It didn't matter he just needed a plan to fix the economy. He never offered one because he did not think one was needed. He confused need and truth with getting elected. ONe has nothing to do with the other. That is mud boys other falacy. Truth is a sure prescription for failure at the polls. Ask Bill Clinton.

Mud Boy demands that Bush squander this chance by fighting over small items in the near term. But the long scheme to win the senate by 60 working votes is all that really matters. Muddboy wants Bush to do what Reagan did which is just go for limiting government growth. Reagan makes Mudboy happy. A tax cut and double goverment spending over years in return for holding the presidency and losing the senate is considered as great success by Mud boy.

The name of the game is 60 working votes in the Senate. Everybody knows it. Every one with a D after his name is trying to prevent it. So are most of the far right. Nothing new there. When the Democrats ask for targets at their shooting range, it is the far right that makes up the line fighting for the job. To get sixty votes the Demorats have to be portrayed as the obstructionist fighters and the Republicans as those that just try to work things out. It takes 60 percent to get 60 voters. And as soon as a party is specifiv they lose most of what gets them from 50 to 60.

Sixty percent of the public is against what we want to do. Just as sixty percent of the population is against what the Democrats want to do. The wishy washy 20 percent in the middle wants to do nothing. They keep saying,"Can' we just get along?"

The object is to get the 60 percent opposed to the Democrats to vote against Democrats and for Republicans. To do that Republicans have to keep their heads down and make sure the Democrats a$$es are up. That is the current situation.

The game is for the middle. If you don't think like the middle you lose. The problem is never getting those that agree with you to agree with you. It is getting those that disagree with you to do what you want. That is the trick. And telling them what you want to do is zero help.

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